Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome Councillor Matt Garrett, vice president of the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA); Alison Allen, chief executive of NILGA; Tom Lavery, chair of Building Control Northern Ireland (BCNI) from Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon (ABC) Borough Council; and Ian Harper, building control manager at Belfast City Council.

Thank you very much for coming back at this critical point in the Bill's scrutiny. I invite you to make a presentation or update, and after that we will take questions from members. Thank you very much.

Councillor Matt Garrett (Northern Ireland Local Government Association): Thank you, Chair and Committee members, for inviting NILGA and building control colleagues back. As the Chair said, I am Councillor Matt Garrett, and I am the vice president of NILGA. I am joined by my colleague from NILGA and technical officers from Building Control, who will take you, clause by clause, through the issues and the practical implications for councils and communities. I pass on apologies from NILGA president, Councillor Billy Webb. He planned to be here, but, unfortunately, he is unwell, so he is not able to make it.

When we were before the Committee on 22 January we set out local government's broad support for the intent of the Bill. We also, however, outlined our serious concerns about deliverability, public expectation, resourcing, cost recovery and the balance between public interest and private rights. At that evidence session, Committee members were clear, in our view, that councils are the implementers and main delivery partners of the legislation. The Committee's expectation was that DAERA officials would engage urgently with local government to work through the issues raised before the Committee moved into its clause-by-clause scrutiny.

Since January, local government has done exactly what was asked of it. NILGA, councils and professional officers have engaged constructively with DAERA officials to try to resolve concerns and strengthen the Bill. We have participated in follow-up discussions and provided detailed feedback through joint sector submissions and officer engagement. Despite that engagement, the core concerns remain unresolved, and nothing substantive has been presented by the Department that removes the delivery risks that councils highlighted.

As such, we wrote to the Minister to request a meeting to resolve those issues. Due to the tight time frames associated with the Bill, the Minister proposed a meeting with the permanent secretary and senior officials. That took place last Thursday, 9 April. At that meeting, local government repeated, as it has consistently for months, the issues that needed to be resolved in the Bill. The targeted amendments are to ensure that the Bill is operationally deliverable and does not expose councils to serious legal and financial risk, while preserving the integrity of the Bill's policy intent, which is what we want to do.

Whilst the meeting with DAERA officials was constructive in tone, and the lines of communication remain open, the core issues with the Bill have not been resolved. The Department has, helpfully, shared draft amendments to the Bill that are currently under consideration. However, none of them addresses the substantive issues that have been raised by local government.

DAERA officials continue to place a huge focus on addressing those issues in any statutory guidance, but local government wishes to place on record that, while statutory guidance is important, it cannot correct defects or gaps in primary legislation. That point was raised explicitly during the meeting with the permanent secretary, but it is not fully reflected in the official minutes. Councils' concern is that if ambiguous thresholds, undefined terms and enforcement gaps remain in the Bill, courts will interpret the primary statute rather than the guidance. That will expose councils to legal challenge and enforcement paralysis. That concern is born of extensive case law not just on dilapidation but across all regulatory functions.

The discussions with the permanent secretary and senior officials reinforced local government's view that the outstanding issues are not matters of guidance, implementation detail or local discretion but structural issues that go to the core workability of the Bill, including cost recovery, emergency powers, appeal suspension and dealing with unknown owners.

We have not come here today to repeat the discussions that we had in January just for the sake of it. We are here primarily to help the Committee with what it asked for: a clear account of what still needs to be fixed to ensure that the Bill can deliver in practice.

Local government continues to support the ambition of the Dilapidation Bill. We want modern powers to tackle neglected, dilapidated and dangerous buildings and sites, because we see their impact daily on town centres, community pride, footfall, investment and, in some cases, public safety. A Bill can be well intentioned but fail in delivery if the detail creates uncertainty, cost exposure or delay.

I will say a wee word about comparators. Much emphasis is being put on the comparison with England's powers under section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. While that is a helpful basis for comparison, other relevant legislation in Scotland and Ireland provides useful suggestions on how to embed clear statutory thresholds in legislation and, through clear cost-recovery rules, how to enable urgent action while protecting public bodies.

England operates within different funding assumptions, particularly the new burdens doctrine, which ensures that councils receive full central government funding for initiatives. English councils have regeneration powers and significant associated regeneration funding. Councils here do not have any such enabling conditions. We understand from Department officials that there has been no engagement with local government in those jurisdictions to understand whether there are challenges or difficulties with their legislation and how those can be addressed.

Local government believes that the issues with the wording and clarity of the primary legislation can be worked out if time and attention are given to them. As a legal/professional task, drafting a Bill is very different from ensuring that it can be delivered in an operational environment and, ultimately, defended in court. The most effective way through that is to have the Bill's draftsperson in the same room as local government solicitors and enforcement officers in order to work through the wording. We have made multiple requests for that to happen, but we have been advised that it is not the usual practice.

As in January, our message today is simple: we absolutely support the intent of the Bill, but we need a Bill that is clear, workable and financially sustainable for all councils. Otherwise, it will not deliver.

I will hand over to Alison Allen, the NILGA chief executive, who can provide clarification on the engagement timeline. We will then move to the remaining detail with our building control colleagues.

Ms Alison Allen (Northern Ireland Local Government Association): I thank the Committee for giving us the opportunity to speak again on these matters. With your indulgence, we will take a few moments to clarify issues to do with engagement and timelines, because it is important to correct the record from our perspective.

There was engagement between councils and DAERA between 2012 and 2016 on the need for a new enforcement Bill. Councils clearly supported the introduction of more up-to-date legislation. Even at that stage, however, it was made clear, including in writing, that there was a need for funding, resources and detailed engagement to create workable legislation. We were happy, through our enforcement officers, to be involved in that.

Between 2016 and 2024, there was no engagement between DAERA and councils on the matter, although it is acknowledged that the Assembly was down and that no Minister was in place for part of that time. On 9 May 2024, DAERA wrote to the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) seeking confirmation that councils still supported the preferred option. SOLACE confirmed in writing its support for that in principle, with the explicit caveat that that support was dependent on the need for proper engagement being addressed and there being clarity on operational issues, funding support, workable cost recovery mechanisms and full sight of the draft legislation.

In June 2025, the Bill was formally introduced. A public consultation commenced quickly after that and ran until October 2025. In November 2025, NILGA, SOLACE and Building Control Northern Ireland submitted consistent written concerns on the Bill and draft statutory guidance, which were consistent with previous points that had been highlighted.

You will recall that, on 22 January 2026, we provided evidence to the Committee. Officers here have given significant time to their engagement with DAERA officials, with a view to resolving any outstanding difficulties. Unfortunately, despite an additional meeting with the permanent secretary last week, we are here again to say that those issues have not been resolved.

We think that the timeline is important to show you that we have been consistently supportive of the intent of the Bill. That is not the issue. We want to replace outdated dilapidation and dangerous structures legislation. However, we want to show you that we have been clear in writing for years that our support is in principle and conditional on addressing our serious concerns about the Bill's workability in its current draft.
It is also important, therefore, to state that it is not accurate to characterise the Bill, in its current draft, as one that was asked for by local government. We ask for workable, quality legislation. In a few moments, our officers will explain to you that there are serious concerns about whether it will deliver on the Minister's intent, which is what we are all here to ensure.

It is also clear, and we must emphasise, that we would not say that the Bill has been co-designed with local government. We ask you to support us in our request for a practical clause-by-clause process that results in amendments to the draft primary legislation where needed, rather than a proposal from departmental officials that places a heavy reliance on statutory guidance for the reasons that we have already set out and which our officers will cover later. That process will deliver the best results if we include, as we have requested of the Department, the need for the relevant legal professionals to be in the room together. We think that that will be the best result. Our officers advise that it will not take much time to fix those issues. We just cannot seem to get the right people in the room.

Committee, if you are content, we have the experts in the room who will take you through some of the specific issues and talk to you about why they are issues, why they remain risks and, if they were corrected in the draft primary legislation, how we could all collectively ensure that the intent of the Bill is delivered upon.

Go ahead, Tom.

Mr Tom Lavery (Building Control Northern Ireland): I am conscious that time is precious. There are 31 clauses in the Bill, so I do not want to take you through each and every one of them. Our main concerns are that there are gaps, procedural problems and risks, particularly relating to the emergency actions, cost recovery and appeals. If members wish, I can take you through an example. Otherwise, I am happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): It would be useful if you could take us through a number of examples. Have you a paper that you could share with the Committee that gives examples in explicit detail? One of the good pieces of work that the Committee has embarked on is getting the Department to align with us on what existing legislation is being transferred across and reworded, which, it suggests, does not make a significant change.

Then we are trying to identify the cost implications and limitations. We are looking at the explicit changes, but we recognise that a lot of that is just tidying up existing legislation into a single document, which is what we want and what you guys want, as well as to identify keenly the specific changes. If you want to give us an example, Tom, do so. Do you also have a document that you could then share with us?

Ms Allen: We do, yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Yes? OK. Thank you.

Mr Lavery: If we take the live example of emergency action when something is seriously detrimental and a risk to the public, the emergency powers and emergency action legislation are there to deal with that, but there is also the dangerous structures legislation in the background. As a professional officer, I would never contemplate using the emergency powers as they stand because there is too much risk for council. I will explain why.

First, you have two different clauses, two different actions and two different notices, served at two different times. That adds to confusion as to which one is being appealed, if there is to be an appeal. As members will know, a lot of those call-outs are at weekends. If you do not know the owner, you may not be able to identify the owner at that time. It may take several days to identify the owner, if they can be identified at all.

All of that is in the background. I am thinking about the appeal process and court action later on. If we take action, for example, because there is a danger to life — a council will, rightly, take action if an owner cannot be identified — we have to follow that up with a follow-up notice within seven days. There is also a problem that, if an appeal comes out of the woodwork and an owner comes forward, if he has read the follow-up notice properly, he can use this legislation so that a council will end up picking up the cost and be sued for compensation. Unfortunately, that is how it is written at the moment. When you go to court, the court will ask whether you followed the legislation. We will says, "Yes, we followed the legislation; however, we could not find the owner at the time, so we could not tick that box. We had our engineers assess the situation and tell us that there was a danger of falling material". It could be argued that the owner could come forward with their engineer and say that they did not agree to that. Members will be aware that there are disagreements between owners' engineers and council engineers, generally in the case of listed buildings etc. There have been several cases where the owners wanted a building taken down, but, because it was in a conservation area, the council engineers were trying to preserve the building and said, "No, it does not need taken down". Such cases causes a debate. As I explained the last time, appealing one in court can take several weeks. For example, it may be that an owner cannot be found, there is a debate between solicitors or if there are problems with getting access. A building may be so dangerous that it takes a week or two to get access or asbestos might be involved. All those things can delay actions being taken.

There are immediate actions that can be taken and follow-up actions. If the follow-up action is delayed by several weeks, for cogent reasons, the courts will look at the legislation. The way the legislation is in Britain at the moment points to the appeals, if it is reasonable to take one. One view might be to say, "How immediate was this action?". In the council's initial view, immediate action might have had to be taken there and then because of a danger to the public. However, there may be delays that the council could not foresee, where there is an argument between engineers etc. Where those delays are prolonged, the court could take the view, "We are here six weeks, and the building is still being propped; did you use the right legislation?". Given how the law is written, the court can take the view that if the emergency action was not taken under the right legislation, and the dangerous structures legislation could have been used, which, ultimately, would have provided the same end result, a council can be liable. It is written in the legislation that councils have used the wrong legislation and the wrong powers. The councils are liable for costs and can be sued.

That puts us in a very precarious position. That is why, as an officer charged with using this legislation, I would not avail of it in its current form. It is too risky for councils. There is also cost recovery — what is reasonable, and all the rest of it. There are situations with regard to cost recovery. Members will be aware that for town-centre sites, you can either prop up a dangerous building or take away the front facade and prop up the rest of the building. You expose an empty site, so you have to fence it off to keep it safe from trespass or antisocial behaviour etc. When it comes to cost recovery, once the danger is removed, the legislation specifically says that councils cannot charge for fencing or security on the site.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): May I stop you there? I want to ask about that. My office is on a street where that is the case, where structures have been in place for years. To use Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council as an example, at the moment where is the liability in that instance? What legislation has it used that this legislation would change?

Mr Lavery: The current liability falls under the dangerous structures legislation, which dates from the 1800s.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Sorry?

Mr Lavery: It is from 1854. There is legislation from 1903, depending on which legislation is used. There are two pieces of legislation, but I am not sure which one your council has used. At the moment, all we can do is put a charge on the property. That is one element. If we put a charge on a property and it is sold off, the council has a claim on it.

The Bill specifically states that if the danger — the facade that was in danger of falling — has gone, we cannot charge for the fencing or the security of it. Those are the sorts of issues, but they are not insurmountable. The intent of the legislation is absolutely welcome; it is down to the drafting. Drafting it without having experience of how things work in reality seems to be the problem. Going through it clause by clause, it may read perfectly well and be perfectly well intentioned. However, it is about the unexpected outcomes of a real-life scenario when dealing with not just with the clause in front of you but the cost-recovery clause or the appeal clause. That brings things into stark reality. The more that we read through the Bill, and the more that we align the clauses with real-life scenarios, the more increased our concern. The issues are not insurmountable, but we need time to sit down with the legislators and say, "This is not working quite right. Here is why, and here is an option to change the wording to make it work".

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Has NILGA, working in conjunction with Building Control NI, got a working paper that outlines those issues and problems clause by clause? We talked them through a number of times, and this is a good one because we have been working in that space ourselves. It is good to have the officials at the back of the room because they can hear your evidence and respond when we raise those issues with them later. Do you have a working paper that is live and lists those issues to assist the Committee?

Ms Allen: We do have a paper that highlights the issues —

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Clause by clause?

Ms Allen: — and what needs to be corrected. We can reference the correct clauses. The difficulty is that we do not have access to Bill's draftspeople. That is not expertise that exists in local government. It is a particular skill set, and the best way to resolve the issues is to have both teams of legal professionals in the room at the same time.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): What you could do is lean on us a little bit in that regard. If the Committee is minded that the arguments made are useful, we would have access through the Bill officials here.

Ms Allen: Yes, brilliant.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): That is a power that we have. If amendments are required, we can try to fashion them, if the case is made and the Committee is agreed. We could certainly put ourselves in that position, which is one use of the Committee.

I want to ask about the usefulness of the statutory guidance, whether you would like to see it referenced in the Bill, and how important it is. I think that I read in your report that there were concerns about definitions in the statutory guidance. Would you like to comment on that?

Ms Allen: I will let the officers pick up on the detail of the statutory guidance, but the core point goes to the fact that not just in the area of dilapidation, but in case law, regulators in councils across all fields feel that statutory guidance does not fix anomalies, contradictions or, indeed, gaps where they exist in primary legislation. We could probably give you hundreds of examples from across councils where councils have found themselves in court in this space, and the issue is that when there is no anchor in primary legislation, the guidance simply becomes guidance. It has no weight whatsoever. That is the core issue for us because officials are placing huge emphasis on addressing many of the concerns through guidance. The lines of communication are open and they are constructive. The officials feel strongly that those issues should be addressed in guidance. We are saying that that cannot be the case, because it leaves us wide open. I know that there are issues with the guidance as well, are there not?

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): You are taking the Grim Reaper approach today.

Mr Lavery: I have here my printed version of the statutory guidance. I do not know whether you can see, but I have plenty of red and yellow on it.

Ms Allen: The flow chart at the end is a good visual example.

Mr Lavery: Yes, that sums it up. That does not make sense.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK.

Mr Lavery: It is not workable; it goes round in circles. If you take a real-life example and try to fit it into the flow chart to see how it will work out, you are saying, "What's going on here?". You can see that I have more questions about why it is going round in circles. If you are drafting legislation without having background knowledge of how it works in reality and the implications in reality with real-life examples, that is where it goes wrong.

My copy of the statutory guidance sums the situation up: it is not workable. It is fixable, and we would like to sit with the legislators and work through how to fix it. The concern is that the legislation was not written correctly in the first place. It has gaps, and we know about those gaps because we are familiar with how this works in reality through real-life cases.

I appreciate that officials will not have had that background information — I sympathise with that — but we would like to sit down and work through real-life examples and say, "How will this fit?".

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I hope that this question makes sense when I put it to you. When we move to the Bill's next stage, the Assembly will have the power to remove clauses. It also has the power to suggest amendments to the clauses. You have alluded to the fact that there may be two pieces of legislation that do the same thing. Just because they are old does not mean that they are not beautiful. They are old — that is fine — but they work. Have you a preference? We are open to that. In the Chamber, we can remove a clause, amend a clause and take a preference on legislation that exists. The Committee recognises that a lot of this is about tidying legislation to make something very lean and efficient. It is the ambition of everyone to achieve that. However, the Committee recognises some of the pressures. I am just making you aware of what we can do. The Department has brought forward this legislation, but if you want to remove a clause, and that is debated, it can be done. However, you do not want to remove so many clauses that it makes the whole thing a pointless exercise. This is not a pointless exercise. This could be a very, very useful Bill. Dangerous structures, for example, is an area on which a judge might determine that there are two pieces of existing legislation.

We are also trying to get from the Department clearly defined details of any legislation that will be revoked because of the Bill and might simply be left sitting in the ether. Are you aware of anything in that space?

Mr Ian Harper (Building Control Northern Ireland): We have a process for finding owners in owner unknown cases — I mentioned it when we were here previously — or dealing with situations where no owner is known. We have a process through the Belfast Improvement Act 1878 and the Belfast Corporation Act 1911, which are going to be repealed as a result of this Bill. We go to court and get a court order that allows us to take action on a particular building. We have vires to do that. There are ongoing difficulties with that, such as cost recovery if the owner is not found, the owner being out of the country or the owner being insolvent. There is a range of issues around ownership, and we can struggle to recover the money. Obviously, if there is a danger, you want to take action on the building. The difficulty is that if you revoke those Acts there is nothing in the Bill that covers "owner unknown". That is a gap.

There is talk about using the Interpretation Act 1978 to serve notice to fix a building. There may be practical things. We had conversations, and that was good. We talked it through, but we still felt that there were gaps and that the legislation was not explicit, which is where it needs to be. Dealing with situations in which the owner is not known is crucial, given the state of the Land Registry, with properties that are not registered and owners who are not available. We still need to take action. It is a difficult one. Those two pieces of legislation will be gone, and we will be left with what is in the Bill. I do not believe that it does the same thing.

On top of that, there are powers within article 72 of the Pollution Control and Local Government (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 to serve notice on people who might know the owner or an interested party. We have used that successfully in Belfast. That will also be removed. We do not believe that the powers in the Bill are of the same standing — they are not as wide. You cannot serve notice on as wide a group. You want solicitors; you want to ask a range of people and force them to tell you who the owner is so that you can take action. We do not believe that the new Bill covers that in the same way.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): We have been trying to tease that out with officials. Members, officials also confirmed in writing, on 31 March, that they agree to draft a proposed amendment to clause 16 to broaden the wording to replicate article 72 of the Pollution Control and Local Government (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 so that councils can obtain information from anyone in relation to a property. You are probably hearing that for the first time. Hopefully, it makes sense. It is indicative of the fact that the process is live and people are listening. I suggest that you could give us some information. We will be having another session with officials and the Bill Clerks. After that, we will write to you for information on work that you have done. That will be useful for us and help expedite our work, and it will help you. We will write to you so that it is obvious what we want.

Members, I will move to questions.

Mr McAleer: Thanks for the wide-ranging briefing and for coming back to the Committee. What I am picking up is that, whilst the engagements have been constructive, and NILGA is expressing support for the Bill, even with the issues that you have highlighted, the meetings with the Department have still not addressed the key issues. Is that right?

Ms Allen: That is right. The tone and the lines of communication are open, but the core issues remain. We say that because we want the Bill to be deliverable. Officials are here from the two largest councils in the region when it comes to resources and access to expertise, and those officials have highlighted to you that, if the Bill is passed as drafted, there will be circumstances in which they will not use it, because it exposes their councils to far too much financial and legal risk. That is probably not the position that the Minister, the Department or you want it to be in. The lines of communication remain open, and the relationships are not strained or difficult, but the issues are still not resolved, many months on.

I go back to the point that Councillor Garrett made about the gap between the legal expertise and understanding that are needed to draft a Bill to meet a ministerial intent and the expertise and knowledge that are needed about how it will be delivered in practice, including when you have to defend it in court and stand over your actions, which, as you know, often happens with these kinds of things. We just need to close the gap a bit. The Minister is very supportive of that engagement; we just have not got there yet. We continue to talk to the Department about changes, and lines of communication will remain open, but we have probably reached the point at which we need your support for potential amendments. If you can give us access to the draftspeople — we are talking about a few days — we think that we can resolve the majority of the issues. Is that correct? That is if we get the right people in the room.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): To be clear before we go overboard, I do not think that we are able to give you access to the draftspeople, but if we, as a Committee, agree to draft an amendment, you can feed into the Committee, and the Committee can then take a position on that. You guys, as witnesses, have given us expert advice, which is brilliant, because you will be applying the legislation, so there is no better advice that we can get in this space. If you give us the read-out on that, we will debate it and deal with the drafters. DAERA taking forward suggested amendments is better.

Ms Allen: Yes. Absolutely.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Declan, have you anything else?

Mr McAleer: No, that is it. You have touched on the issues around cost recovery and the practical issues of ownership, legal risks to councils and enforcement stuff. You have highlighted a lot of the key concerns, but it would be helpful if they could be distilled clearly for us into what they might look like as amendments from your side. We can then look at that as a Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Declan's point is well made. This is an interesting Bill, so everyone wants to help the Minister. It is not combat but collaboration that needs to take place.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you for the oral briefing. It was concise and has simplified the situation and made it easier to understand the difficulties. Although there has been engagement with the Department, as Declan mentioned, my reading is that, despite your concerns, it has been left unchanged or has changed very little. Although it is welcomed, the statutory guidance does not go far enough. You have made that clear today.

The Department has said that it is not common practice for you, the Department's enforcement team, the legal teams from the councils and the Department to meet, but it is not impossible. If it were possible for you to get into the room, would I be right in saying that compromises could be reached and concerns could be addressed so that, hopefully, changes could then be implemented?

Ms Allen: The experts say yes.

Ms Finnegan: You have highlighted the issues of unknown and complex ownership that are specific to and prevalent here. In the absence of a clear mechanism in the Bill, how would the council realistically proceed? That is very important. My constituency is Newry and Armagh, but I live in south Armagh, which is a predominantly rural area. Time and again, we see that dilapidated buildings, particularly dangerous ones, lie for years and years. In fact, this legislation will make things worse. Is that observation correct? Will this delay action further because the councils will be reluctant to act based on the fact that it is only statutory guidance?

Ms Allen: Would you say that it will make it worse or that it is no improvement on the 1800s legislation?

Mr Lavery: It misses an opportunity. The current legislation is from the 1800s. It is flawed and has gaps, and it is very difficult to work with. The Bill provides an opportunity for councils, and we totally welcomed it coming forward, but there are still gaps. They are not insurmountable, but we need to work through the Bill with legislators who are good at drafting legislation while taking on board our real-life experiences to determine how it will work out in reality. If we can bring that together, we will have a workable Bill.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you. You have covered the rest of my questions.

Councillor Garrett: I will make a point, Aoife. The technical experts are here, and they know how this will work out. I am a councillor, and you are MLAs. The Chair has alluded to buildings in the street where his office is. We all want the Bill to have an impact on such buildings. We go to councils and say to officials, "There is a building lying there, dilapidated and dangerous". The council may be inhibited in being able to make a positive impact because small technicalities in the Bill will not allow them to move on any further. That is the real-life scenario. If there is additional cost for the councils, we will know that that falls on us every year when we are budgeting, setting the rates and being told no. We have had to do cost recovery in those areas of building control, which means that we have additional costs. That will have an overall detrimental impact on all citizens. That is the real-life view from me. We absolutely support the Bill, but we want to get it 100% right.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you.

Mr Blair: I will start by making a couple of points, if I may. The first point — it has now been clarified better than it was at the start — is that, if the existing legislation was working, we would not be having this conversation, the Bill would not be in front of us, and we, the politicians, would not have spent so many hours, weeks and months of our political careers trying to deal with dangerous and dilapidated buildings that were a risk to the public. We also have to clarify that the subject of funding and resources is objective rather than subjective. The reality is that, if councils ask for more powers, there may well be costs. Some of us could level — I will not call them "charges" — comments that large sums of money can be found, often match-funded by government, to put footpaths in town centres that do not even include sustainable drainage, and there does not seem to be any limit to costs with those types of things. There are superficial schemes to make things look better when footfall is not there.

My questions will try to get to the technicalities. I think that I know the answer to the first question, but we need it on the record. When it comes to the question of having NILGA representatives in the room with the legal representatives and Bill drafters, I assume that you have checked that there is no legal conflict in any of that.

Ms Allen: The advice that we have been given is just that it is not usual.

Mr Blair: It is not usual. Yes, I picked up on that, but no one has said that there is any conflict there.

Ms Allen: No, just that it is not usual.

Mr Blair: It does not mean that it cannot happen, and it may help to close a few gaps that could become stumbling blocks. That has clarified that. You have checked that.

I hope that people do not mind me asking this question, and I do not mean to put the building control people on the spot. I understand why we sometimes generalise about the worst-case examples of vacant properties as if they are the norm: the most dangerous examples, the hardest-to-reach owners, the people who are not contactable and the owner who cannot be placed. Do you know the percentage of the vacant properties dealt with by councils over the years where there was a problem with tracing the owner? Is it the majority of cases? I do not think that it is. We need to put the matter in context: it is probable that the majority of cases pursued show that the owner can be traced and that action can be taken more swiftly than we might be led to believe if we were to concentrate on only the problems.

Mr Harper: It would be the minority of cases. The process of finding owners is quite expensive, because you have to advertise in a paper, which costs money. It would be the minority, but, where you identify an owner, we have to go through particular checks because, when you go to court, the judge may not accept that you have correctly identified who that person is.

Mr Blair: I am only setting the context. I realise that that does not mean that they are not problematic and costly.

My other question is to help to shape our considerations here. Is there any figure that you can give or picture that you can paint around the number of properties that are deliberately left vacant, so that they are not ratable? Are there any assumptions that are drawn on that? I think that I could identify some where the basic structure of the property is good enough, but it deliberately does not have a roof, flooring or windows so that it is not ratable.

Mr Harper: If it is a domestic property, my understanding is that it would need to be getting towards a dilapidated state before it would be taken out of the valuation list. The rating of empty homes means that 100% rates are liable on domestic properties. Obviously, if the roof were to come off, or there were similar issues, it would be for Land and Property Services (LPS) to make a judgement on that. Commercial vacant properties pay 50% of the rate. It could be that people leave properties vacant in order not to pay the full 100% of the rates, but I think that it would go into the same realm as domestic if it were derelict or dilapidated, so someone might leave their property in that state to benefit from not paying rates.

Mr Blair: We probably cannot determine how many of those could be reached in this legislation in comparison with current legislation. They may still be there and still be an issue.

Mr Harper: The legislation will deal with danger, so it will be about removing the danger, rather than bringing a building back into use, or removing the potential serious detriment, which, again, might affect the aesthetics on the outside but might not do anything with the inside to bring it back into use. Bringing properties back into use is the ultimate end game, and that is what stops the continual dereliction and dilapidation happening.

Mr Blair: Of course, the charging of rates would then bring in some income for the council as well. That is another reason why I ask that question. We are trying to find a way in which to guarantee that more of those properties will be brought into the rating system. If this legislation were in place, there would be cost recovery in a different format.

Ms Allen: Perhaps this is a good opportunity to pick up on the resourcing point. You are right: it spreads across a number of areas. We understand from the Minister that the hope and intent is that properties will be brought back to generate ratable income. Councils are very supportive of that, obviously. We need to see the evidence behind those assumptions, so that we can be assured that there is a potential income stream for councils to allow them to manage their finances sustainably. We have not yet seen any evidence to suggest that that is the case. If we could see that, that would be useful.

Tightening the thresholds and definitions in the Bill and managing the cost-recovery issues will go some way to tightening, and potentially reducing, financial exposure and legal risk to councils. There will be a small positive resourcing implication if we can tighten some of the definitions. There remain implementation costs when it comes to systems, training and, potentially, additional staffing, but we do not have the full picture of what working assumptions are being made about the finances, such as bringing ratable income back in. I think that, when NILGA representatives were here previously, my colleague made the point about a potential gap between addressing danger and dilapidation and a building's being ready to be brought back into ratable use. I do not know whether you want to expand on that. The two things are not necessarily directly the same, are they? There can sometimes be a gap.

Mr Harper: After danger is removed from a building, it can still be in a detrimental state. In assessing any building, we would look to see what the actual issue is, whether it is dangerous and, if you remove the danger, whether it is seriously detrimental, because action can be taken on that. That does not bring the building back into use, however. Whether it would bring it to a point at which LPS would assess its rateable value and say that rates were appropriate is a conversation to be had with LPS. The legislation will not deliver the ultimate aim, which is to bring the buildings back into use and avoid them becoming dilapidated again. Even if action is taken, the buildings tend to fall back into the same state.

Mr Wilson: This part of the process is the most useful of all. We can conduct clause-by-clause scrutiny, but I would be reluctant to just go ahead with something that looks nice, have it debated by the Assembly and for the Assembly to say, "Oh, there's another piece of legislation passed", if you guys are not able to work with it, because to do so would be too costly or too complicated. We would do the whole country a disservice by doing that. I am too fresh out of ABC Borough Council to hand Tom — I put on record that I know Tom very well — a poison chalice or something that will not work. That would not help anybody. To put a country term to it, I am being really thick about that. It is ridiculous that we have not had more interactions similar to this evidence session. I am not sure why we have not had more, although I am willing to be educated on that, because I feel that it is the strongest type of interaction.

I feel, as John said, that we need you guys and the officials in, because we have only one opportunity to get this right. I can think of a couple of good examples from ABC that were pure handlins to get resolved. I will not name them, but, from the technical end of things, I would like you guys to revisit them, based on what is before you at the minute, and to point out where this legislation will or will not address the issues and give us a really good steer, based on your technical and professional experience, on how the new Bill could address them in a much more streamlined fashion. The council was fairly out of pocket from dealing with those things, and that helps nobody. That does not help the ratepayers, and we are here because of the ratepayers.

As Councillor Garrett knows, councillors get the thick end of the wedge, being blamed for a lot of things for which they are not responsible. There is an opportunity for that to happen again, when we are the primary legislators. I am reluctant to do that, and I will not do it. If the Bill does not do what it sets out to do, I will stand up in the Chamber and say that it is bad legislation. The bottom line is that this is a monumental waste of time if you cannot use the Bill.

My proposal is that we get the officials here who need to be here and make a Bill that you guys can work with. Officials should be here. There should be no technical disadvantage to them being here to create something that will actually benefit the public, considering that what we are dealing with is dangerous. It was only by the grace of God that somebody was not smothered by tonnes of rubble on the main street, and that is the bottom line. Let us get this to work and create something that works in a reasonable way, within a reasonable time frame, and that does not set off a whole goose chase. My view is that it needs to work properly. We have an opportunity to do that, and I do not know why we should not take that opportunity, even if it takes another few months. Let us not fixate on a deadline. My view is that, even reaching into another mandate is better than dealing with unworkable legislation.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK. Thanks, Gareth. Does anybody else want to come in before I wrap up with NILGA and Building Control NI? No.

I suggest that we communicate with the witnesses later today. There is a time pressure. I mentioned getting a paper from you guys. You do not need to write the proposed amendments, but I need you to outline where you believe that changes and improvements are needed, clause by clause, and to detail whether anything needs to be omitted. The Committee will need that paper by next week because we are on a tight time schedule. If you are here later today, you will hear us changing some of our forward work programme due to the importance of completing our scrutiny of the Bill. We will be as explicit as we can, and I thank you very much for today's session, which was very useful, but we will need that paper by next week if we are to make good use of it and try to include as much as we can. Is that OK?

Ms Allen: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK. Thank you very much.